


a birth but in reverse.

by junipur



Category: Camp Camp (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Animal Death, Brainwashing, Child Neglect, M/M, Past Brainwashing, Verbal Abuse, bitjh bye, daniel & david are childhood friends, gonna be lots of that buckle up baebs, if i was david and the moment my friend did, tags will be added gimme a min, tags will be regularly added and altteeerrred, weird shit like this i would drop them SO damn quick
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-28
Updated: 2018-03-28
Packaged: 2019-04-13 23:35:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14123274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/junipur/pseuds/junipur
Summary: He wants to covet the humanity he knows Daniel possesses, instead of these horrors.





	a birth but in reverse.

**Author's Note:**

> a vital point in each their adolescence.

The first thing that makes itself known to Daniel in particular, is the _silence_. An unusual silence. As any time spent with his newer, _or rather,_ only friend David, was never quiet. There was always little hums that would carry. Soft thumps and thuds that would produce from either his fists or feet that were only deafened because it was grounded against the dead earthy meshes of weeds and dandelions which have all together lost their color.

But Daniel's sure that if he were allowed to go inside David's house that he _knows_ would have floorboards and _not_ carpet, he could hear the fleshy, sticky slaps against the floors and could better listen to David's peppy hums. His voice would travel through the halls and in between his ears. But today seemed alarmingly stiff, in their little dry trench. Hidden in the pith of their freshly dug hole, surrounded by thickets of brittled-yellow wheat and grass-fields. But there never was _pure_ silence, not this kind of silence. Which looms over the both of them, an impending feeling that houses itself right into young Daniel's very being.

He feels that everything is forcibly quieter today. Something is forcing the usual and already very muffled bodily hits by David against the grass around them to be duller, for David's usual humming to be completely flushed out by the audible whorls of wind. Everything feels congealed yet too loose, like treacly tar down his throat stringing off into his gullet in thick, rich goops. He would sacrifice anything--

 

_"Danny?"_

 

to appease the impending prowling slaughterhouse.

 

David definitely takes notice. To what? Who knows: not Daniel, but _he_ knows that _he_ knows he does. If there's one thing that everyone in this small town, in a hundred-mile radius around them knows, it's that David is equal parts oblivious yet astute.

Whether it's because they only just recently turned 12 together this year or not, he's heedful in thinking that not all children are complete, and that he doesn't possess the same orthodox traits that children like David does. But David also, does not carry the same orthodox traits that children of his own world and children like Daniel do. Which doesn't make sense to him, but if it were anything different, he’s sure he’d be even more lost. Anything else different, almost didn’t seem palpable. Which Daniel concurs by his own self that that makes David his best companion. No other person could ever outshine someone like David— because there wasn’t anyone else _like_ David.

"Yeah, sorry.. didn’t hear you at first."

"—I know! It's 'cause of the winds— we should head back now.."

He couldn't help but to scrunch his face at that. And David understands by now, that Daniel isn’t a thing to be translated with ease. But he also does understand that the way he juts his chin up instead of down, the torpor-eyed stare that hangs heavy with his lips puckered out. He’s pouting. Not leering. But he can vividly visualize his teeth already gritting behind his pulled lips.

“Danny! We have to start walking back now- or else we'll- we'll get in trouble." His hands immediately shoot out from his wild mid-air gestures to grapple at his friend's hands. But the offender had already reeled back before he could even bother to graze it, causing the boy to almost topple over forward over his feet. The blond, quick on his feet, smoothly springs out to grab him and sandwiches his body by his back and front. "No, David! Not yet. We can't leave yet! I know you see it-- I know you _feel_ it."

The boy flinches when he practically feels the familiar sensation of his shoulder and back molding underneath the other’s vice grip. It's a habit that David's accustomed to Daniel pulling. The kneading motion reminds him of when they would play with play-dough or just regular cooking dough. But there's really no logical or sound reason as to why the blond boy would transfer that tic to things like his freckled skin, since it's not exactly pliable like dough. Maybe he just always needed to keep his hands busy.

“What’re you talking about?” It’s set up exactly like a question, but there’s a bundled sense of urgency that Daniel detects, that doesn’t rest easy on David’s tongue.

He gauges at the redhead, pulling back one side of his lips into a deeper grimace. David finds that he too, thinks his words are carrying less and less weight to it.

“You _felt it!”_

”No! I _don’t!_ I _didn’t_ feel it!! I don’t! I don’t! _I don’t—!!_ ”

The two flail with abandon. Tugging and yanking savagely at each other until their brains had completely pivot on its heels to reflect their original aims away from the very front to the very back.

“It’s him! It’s Xemoog! David— he’s, he’s angry! Stop it! Now!" On the other hand, it's a delight that their brawl had come to a pause. Though David did not at all anticipate the brash shove, making him completely pinned and immobile by the other. "This is why we’re angry right now. It’s the negative energy— from there!” His index finger jabs upwards at the sky in quick succession. Up— where it’s visibly crestfallen. Soon, the sky will open its maw for retribution, for Xemoog.

The blond, now masked in the dry leaves and dirt-stains from their earlier tumble suddenly feels vibrations below his chest.

It’s David, whimpering.

When Daniel briskly makes way for his own hands to cling to each of David’s cheeks, David’s hands spring towards to fold against his face. The whimpering does not only get louder, but does it also increase in heaves that Daniel feels against his own chest.

”David—“ He goes to grab his wrists but is swatted away. “Davey—“ Frantically, he continues to keep batting at him the more Daniel tries to pin him down but it’s not without a strangled whine and another miffed shout of _“Davey!”_ does Daniel actually manage to keep his wrists down.

“Davey. We have to! Or else..” He trails off, moreso in frenzied fear than as an underlying threat. “or else—“ “Fine! Okay!”

Daniel physically droops.

“We’ll— We will make Xemoog happy— and then we can go home?”

The boy in question nods profusely, more than satisfied with the unexpected outcome. And the questionable sudden will to cooperate.

Hmm. They just needed.. a rodent now? Or some sort of kit around them. Whatever it should be, it's dawned on him that they're on borrowed time! It can’t be anything older than them, it wouldn’t do at all. In fact, that pure notion could practically be dubbed a ticket straight to Xemoog’s hellscape. It’s Spring. There’s bound to be a plethora of nesting sites just above them off their trench. Daniel is so certain of it he swivels on the soles of his shoes to tell his friend of his fresh revelation until he audibly skids to a stop and suddenly grows an unreadable expression.

Only in that exact moment, does David stop fumbling.

..

”David.”

”..Uhm.” Just as soon as he realizes his own hesitance, his feet swiftly rotates him around with a sheepish " _yeeaah?_ ”, the ending unfurling and pinching off into a high-pitched crack. His back and shoulders are noticeably hunched over and his arms are tucked tight into his jacket’s fraying pockets, it looks completely unnatural and his posture rigid.

 

Daniel can read him like the morning paper.

 

“Show me your pockets,” the vowels and consonants are carefully drawn out, as if its only purpose is solely to accent the other’s failed endeavor.

“No.” David already knows this. The knowledge hangs low and heavy like an omen of some sort. It’s why he steps back against their trench, it’s why Daniel corners him in. “Why not?”

”My hands are just cold! Danny, it’s so cold, we can’t possibly find anything here. Half the—“ a shiver, “half the baby animals are already back in their homes when the wind began!” David scours at the beaten topic and _genuinely_ hopes Daniel will find purchase in this fact. But the only thing that it succeeded in is testing Daniel’s already diminishing patience, “psh, yeah?”

Suddenly there’s an addition of two extra hands fishing inside of David’s pockets, which evokes a cross of a shriek and a gasp from David. “Well. Thank goodness we have one right here! Quick thinking, Davey.” Squirming inside his fists is a delightfully tiny warm body with its cold nose, just beginning to peep out of the hole Daniel had cracked open with his thumbs. It was a squirrel. Couldn't be any younger than just a few months old. In dismay, the baby squirrel writhes more and more in the blond's caged fists. How could Daniel do this? "Give it back, Daniel! Give it back! Please!" The swelling force that Daniel doesn't place into a blow, Daniel instead places it into the depth of his own eyes that appear older than he actually is. David, with his hummingbird heart, instinctively clutches to himself. Never had he seen such a formidable, wild maelstrom cultivate in his friend's baby blues. In that childish, pristine sheen of what would be impish reckonings to an outsider, is a deeper breed of malice. "Danny.."

"Back. Off."

Which, he does. Eventually. But not without tearing up. He carefully watches his friend plop onto his knees, the baby squirrel kept in place with his hand onto the ground. The wind pricks at David's eyes, as if unsatisfied with the constant gushing streams of tears and begins to metaphorically prod and poke at it-- to wring out more tears. The boy's throat clenches with unmeasured spasms, like he was the little baby squirrel getting choked. "Daniel.." he warbles. "You said that the la-ast time was the.. _snf_.. last _time_.." The silence, now somehow more louder than ever, spoke for Daniel himself, and David couldn’t help but to completely and utterly wilt at the fact. It couldn't have possibly meant nothing to Daniel, otherwise they wouldn't have had such a physical debacle over it-- there was some-- some inkling of compassion in Daniel, if he's willing to do something like this again-- to care so much like this again. A foreboding rustle is the only sound that elicits from Daniel's entire presence, and even though they had both only just three minutes ago invaded each other's space to the highest degree, David feels like he's interrupting.

Interrupting on something too personal, too intimate. The very first thought from the very first time Daniel had done the same exact thing to appease his Lord; David thinks, it won't happen again. And that it would be enough for the Lord, Xemoog. But it had carried on into a more and more frequent business. Squirrels, bunnies, and kits started vanishing, and in return the influx of predator animals their small town once had, is almost completely depleted. David remembered jabbing one time, that their ecosystem's probably all shot down to hooey. After a moment of uneasy, stale silence, Daniel's contradictory easy response of "well, it's probably what Xemoog intended," is shot back. But David thinks, that Daniel thinks, that there's some truth to his riposte.

David jumps back and braces himself at the sight of Daniel's hunting knife. His hands are cuffed against his mouth to muffle his sobs and whines and he wished Daniel had to common decency to do the same to the squirrel when he smoothly sinks it into the pith of the squirrel's gut. He doesn't go overboard with it, as all it needed was the one glide to its core. It's handled with a morbid precision found only in those who handle a knife like an art, the way it had glided seamlessly through the furry pelt to velvet flesh like butter sends him sliding down their trench wall, the imminent waves of nausea slink down inside his brain and body like molasses. The only way his mind and body accepts these overridden emotions and senses is through the sudden, throaty wails and sobs that instantly rings Daniel out of his trance. “David-"

He makes haste and abandons the gift for Xemoog in order to grant solace to David, already slumped down to David's level and rubbing his back gingerly. David can feel the beginnings of Daniel's usually endearing kneading tic, but he can't help but to weep harder, louder at it. He wants to covet the humanity he knows Daniel possesses, instead of these horrors.

So he takes what he can get and all but leans forward to the stuffy warmth of Daniel’s chest. Then David balls up his freckled fists, bringing them to Daniel’s back, punching pitifully at it. He’s well aware it doesn’t hurt, doesn’t even give his friend a tingle of a dull ache. But the muted _thump-thump-thump_ he, himself, feels and hears when his own knuckles engenders upon contact at the crux of Daniel’s spine makes him feel better than the repetitive, soothing patterns on his own back that Daniel traces. Though no matter how much he willed his hits to be harder, to be quicker, they slow before they ultimately come to a complete stop and he can only wail and squall.

 

 

But something had let up, for the cycle of David’s grieving whines and squalls against Daniel’s stained chest to be completely flushed out by the audible crooning of coos.

**Author's Note:**

> i realize that having a set up for world-building or meta-building in the first chapter is always boring to read and to go through but its good practice for me though i hope i didn't make it insufferable! 
> 
> also, just to clarify im going off of my own ~ARTISTIC LIBERTIES~ with daniels weird cult thing ok its gonna be an emulation from weird things that could only happen in my worst nightmares
> 
> im trying my hand at a fic that would hopefully give sum flavor to daniel, this isnt necessarily a daniel redemption fic but i think theres some sliver of hope for daniel to come back down to earth. how tho? we gon' see.......  
> xoxo
> 
> ** also i edited a LOT of this on mobile and am publishing it from mobile as well so if its ugly my bad ill be more careful!


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